Ars Magna: The Ten-Square

Word squares have always fascinated me. From an early age I took delight in devising regular 3-by-3 and 4-by-4 squares, perhaps to the detriment of a few well-meaning teachers, who mistook my linguistic activities for doodling. Undeterred by these knockbacks, I continued to practise the forbidden art, being more careful not to get caught

Spelling in adolescents with dyslexia: errors and modes of assessment

In this study we focused on the spelling of high-functioning students with dyslexia. We made a detailed classification of the errors in a word and sentence dictation task made by 100 students with dyslexia and 100 matched control students. All participants were in the first year of their bachelor’s studies and had Dutch as mother tongue. Three main error categories were distinguished: phonological, orthographic, and grammatical errors (on the basis of morphology and language-specific spelling rules). The results indicated that higher-education students with dyslexia made on average twice as many spelling errors as the controls, with effect sizes of d ≥ 2. When the errors were classified as phonological, orthographic, or grammatical, we found a slight dominance of phonological errors in students with dyslexia. Sentence dictation did not provide more information than word dictation in the correct classification of students with and without dyslexia

Query Expansion of Zero-Hit Subject Searches: Using a Thesaurus in Conjunction with NLP Techniques

The focus of our study is zero-hit queries in keyword subject searches and the effort of increasing recall in these cases by reformulating and, then, expanding the initial queries using an external source of knowledge, namely a thesaurus. To this end, the objectives of this study are twofold. First, we perform the mapping of query terms to the thesaurus terms. Second, we use the matched terms to expand the user’s initial query by taking advantage of the thesaurus relations and implementing natural language processing (NLP) techniques. We report on the overall procedure and elaborate on key points and considerations of each step of the process

Creative activities and skills for bright and gifted children to supplement the Scott, Foresman and Company new basic readers for grade two

Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston Universit

Out of Many, One: Toward Rigorous Common Core Standards From the Ground Up

Analyzes high school standards for English in twelve states and math in sixteen states designed for college- and career-readiness. Examines their alignment with the American Diploma Project's benchmarks for common core standards. Discusses implications

Building-in quality rather than assessing quality afterwards: a technological solution to ensuring computational accuracy in learning materials

[Abstract]: Quality encompasses a very broad range of ideas in learning materials, yet the accuracy of the content is often overlooked as a measure of quality. Various aspects of accuracy are briefly considered, and the issue of computational accuracy is then considered further. When learning materials are produced containing the results of mathematical computations, accuracy is essential: but how can the results of these computations be known to be correct? A solution is to embed the instructions for performing the calculations in the materials, and let the computer calculate the result and place it in the text. In this way, quality is built into the learning materials by design, not evaluated after the event. This is all accomplished using the ideas of literate programming, applied to the learning materials context. A small example demonstrates how remarkably easy the ideas are to apply in practice using the appropriate technology. Given that the technology is available and is easy to use, it would appear imperative that the approach discussed is adopted to improve quality in learning materials containing computational results